http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/boarding

In class, we examined how varying patterns affect the flow of traffic through the network, particularly in Braess’ Paradox, where self-interested drivers intent on finding their best strategy in fact results in a worse situation overall for everyone involved. This article from Wired.com focuses on how to reduce the severe inefficiency of airplane boarding and explains Jason Steffen’s novel method of improving the process, possibly making it twice as fast as the current back-to-front method. He argues that the current method of boarding (back-to-front) is not optimal because although it eliminates clogging in the aisles that would occur in a front-to-back boarding scenario, it doesn’t eliminate the clogging that occurs in each section of the plane as a large group of people attempt to situate themselves in one small space.

We saw in examples of Braess’s Paradox that sometimes procedures that are meant to help traffic flow can throw off the equilibrium and ultimately delay all users of the network. In the theory proposed by Steffen, airlines could fill a plane by asking all passengers in alternating rows to board at the same time; passengers in seats 1A,3A,5A,7A etc… would board the plane together and would have enough room to get situated faster because their seats are staggered throughout the plane. They would be followed by another group of staggered passengers, and so on until the plane is filled. Although this model slows the flow of passengers onto the plane, each passenger is given more time and square area to situate themselves without slowing other passengers down; the outcome is a shorter boarding time for the entire aircraft. This model is more efficient than the back-to-front model because it results in a better equilibrium within which each passenger takes the shortest amount of time to get situated. The back-to-front model creates delays for the first group of passengers that enter the plane because it forces each passenger to wait for previous passengers to get situated before moving on, which in turn delays each subsequent passenger boarding the plane.

This new method of optimizing boarding traffic has proven efficient in computer models but has yet to be tested in real life situations; such tests would demonstrate whether this model would move the traffic flow closer to equilibrium or present another Braess’s Paradox.